Conventional toys include dolls, plush animals, three-dimensional representations of cartoon or comic book characters, toy trucks and cars, and the like. Many toys resemble inanimate objects, not capable of interacting with a person during play. Other toys are interactive insofar as they are adapted to respond to input from a person.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,820,236 to Berliner et al. discloses a soft doll within which is mounted a flexible piezoelectric sensor adjacent to an outer surface thereof. The sensor generates an electric signal when subjected to stress effective in bending the sensor, which signal is processed by a central processing unit to produce predetermined speech from a speech synthesizer in the doll.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,011,449 teaches a doll having bend sensors mounted to appendages such as arms to produce signals varying with the degree of bending or displacement of the arms. The signals are processed to give rise to varying vocalizing sounds.
The sensors of dolls taught by the above patents, though flexible, are limited in the number of configurations they may assume. For instance, the sensors cannot be twisted or stretched to produce signals which lead to the production of programmed responses. Further, the sensors do not function as decorative elements, being mounted internally.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved more intelligent interactive toy utilizing sensors which can be stimulated in more ways to produce a larger number of different signals leading to a great variety of different programmed responses. Another object is to provide a toy having sensors which can be variously mounted including externally as a decorative feature where the sensors can be stimulated directly in order to produce a programmed response.